Culling Images Process

I have been spending my recovery time from surgery doing some major image culling in Lightroom Classic. Before I found Photo Mechanic, I hardly culled any images because it took too long in Lightroom Classic with a catalog in excess of 900,000 images. I have managed to cull over 200,000 images. One reason I am culling so heavily, is that I want to be able to take my entire catalog with me on the road using small, external SSD drives.

One of the joys of culling and working on past images is finding images you had forgotten! Such as this Green Honeycreeper watching a Blue-Gray Tanager come in for a landing. This was captured in Costa Rica in 2024.

OM-1 | M.Zuiko 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO @ 438mm

1/800's | F5.6 | ISO 3200

I have been contemplating my importing and culling workflow and here is where I stand to date:

1. Import Images using Photo Mechanic (that software calls the import process ingesting).
2. Apply copyright metadata, overarching keywords, and rename image files on import into Photo Mechanic.
3. Cull images rapidly using Photo Mechanic.
   1. Culled Images are as follows: clearly out of focus or way out of exposure (the histogram and highlight alerts in Photo Mechanic are not accurate enough for fine culling for exposure), subjects that are way too far forward, back, up or down in the image, subjects that are too centered, poor composition, head, body, and leg position. Those are the general issues I consider.
4. Import Images into Lightroom from Photo Mechanic (retain ORF file name and type), apply DxO PureRaw preset to prep images for pre-sharpening and noise reduction.
5. Final cull for fine focus; head, body and leg position, composition, color, etc.

If you would like to learn more about this process, my OM System Mentorship Program - Part 3: Master Your Post Processing, Master Your Photography is just the ticket!

Here is another image I came across while culling I wanted to share captured in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park in 2023:

OM-1 | M.Zuiko 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO @ 195mm

1/1000's | F5.6 | ISO 800

B&W Conversion in Nik Collection Silver Effex